3.The Structures of Narrative Imagination: Reading an Outline of Theodor Fontane’s Novel Die Poggenpuhls as a Test Case for Genetic Narratology

Matthias Grüne

©2024 Matthias Grüne, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0426.03

1. Introduction: From Story to Discourse

The aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, I will propose a close reading of a genetic document on a narratological basis. I will thus use narratology as a reading strategy (cf. Van Hulle 2022, 149) to gain insights into the creation of a literary text—in my case a novel by the German author Theodor Fontane (1819–98). In this respect, ‘genetic narratology’ is to be understood as a combination rather than a fusion of genetic criticism and narratology. On the other hand, I will explore whether the analysis of a text type which is not commonly object of narratological research can add new perspectives to narratological debates. The question here is whether one can also speak of ‘genetic narratology’ in a narrower sense, i.e. as a designation of a differentiated field of narratological expertise that is aligned with, and enriched by, the study of genetic research.

For this purpose, I will focus not on an entire ‘genetic dossier’, but on a single text consisting of two handwritten pages. It is a plot outline that Fontane wrote between the end of 1891 and the beginning of 1892 in preparation for his novel Die Poggenpuhls [The Poggenpuhl Family].1 The novel was published in the journal Vom Fels zum Meer from October 1895 to March 1896 and as a book edition at the end of 1896, but the published text as well as other documents from the genetic dossier remain in the background here. The main reason for this narrow focus is that it helps to balance the genetic and the narratological aspects of the research. Studying the genesis of a text from the first idea to the final stylistic touches is primarily a genetic task, and compiling a dossier requires specific knowledge of the author’s manuscripts and working methods. By selecting a single document that represents a particular stage of the genetic process, I aim to move away from the typical questions of genetic research such as what external events might have influenced the author, how the plot developed over several years, or what led the author to delete one passage and retain another. Instead, attention is drawn to the structural patterns that govern the narrative imagination in order to access (by means of classical narratology) a more general level of composition which is not affected by the decision for or against a single variant.²

The object that makes such a structural analysis possible is anything but spectacular. As already mentioned, it is merely an outline of the planned novel Die Poggenpuhls that Fontane jotted down in the beginning of his work on the project. The text divides the novel into eleven chapters. The sheets with the notes on chapters 1 to 4 and on chapters 8 to 11 have been preserved because Fontane later used the reverse side of the paper for an elaborated draft of the novel. The notes on chapters 5 to 7 have been lost. However, what makes the sketch, even in its fragmentary form, particularly interesting for narrato-genetic research is that it can be read as a kind of vertical cut through the compositional process, revealing different phases in the creation of the narrative. First and foremost, the list of chapters represents what could be called the skeleton of the novel: a sketch of the general course of the plot, its starting and ending points, the connections between chapters, decisive plot twists, etc. But this list contains text passages that already go beyond a mere outline. Fontane inserts authorial comments in which questions of the narrative development are addressed. The text therefore shows direct traces of the narrative imagination in actu. Moreover, the list partially merges into the narrative unfolding of a storyworld. The authorial discourse then becomes the speech of a narrator and even integrates passages of dialogue.

Following Pierre-Marc de Biasi’s (1996, 34–35) typology of genetic documentation, the manuscript thus bridges two phases and operative functions of the textual genesis: it ranges from the pre-compositional phase and the structuring of the story elements to the compositional phase and the textualisation of the narrative. Applying narratological terms, one could say that the text occupies a middle position between the presentation of a story and the elaboration of discourse. Unlike a mere summary, the outline provides insight into the artificial construction of the narrative and the distribution of the attention; it documents, for example, the decision to use letters to convey parts of the story, and even anticipates the character’s dialogue. But it is still a plan for a narrative that has not yet been worked out, and the narrative discourse remains fragmentary. From a genetic perspective, therefore, it makes sense to drop the distinction between story and discourse and to use a triadic model instead. In the following, I will distinguish between story, plot and discourse, all three of which are understood in terms of textual genesis. They thus refer to the compositional process of creating a narrative and denote different stages of narrative composition.

This understanding differs not only from the binary distinction, but also from the common parallelisation of the distinction between story and discourse with that between content and form. Discourse here is not to be understood as any form of a text that has a rudimentary narrative structure (i.e. presents a sequence of events). Rather, it refers to what Franz Stanzel (1986, 37) calls a ‘form of mediacy’, that is, an intentionally elaborated textual design that has the purpose of transmitting a story by means of narration and dialogue. Thus, there could be textual representations of a story or a plot without discourse, although these texts certainly have a form.3 From this genetic approach, story refers to a mere sequence of events and the associated set of elements of a storyworld (i.e. characters, places). It is the product of invention or research and could draw on the cultural inventory of story patterns (i.e. myths, motifs, etc.). A textual representation of a story could be, for example, a short synopsis, a collection of motifs or a list of characters, such as the one that exists from the early phase of Fontane’s work on the Poggenpuhls (cf. Fontane 2006, 174–76). The plot, in turn, is the result of compositional decisions about the specific arrangement of the story elements, for example with regard to the dramaturgy, the suspense or the layout of the mediation structure.4 An outline or a scenario could be seen as a textual representation of a plot. Discourse, finally, emerges from the process of textual elaboration when the author’s summarising, commenting and discussing utterances are transformed into the speech of a narrator and dialogue. Systematically, the elaboration of the discourse represents the last stage of text genesis;⁵ text types in which it becomes accessible are usually elaborated drafts and, of course, published narratives.

In the following analysis I will focus on a document that can be read as a representation of a plot. As already mentioned, this intermediate position makes the document a particularly attractive object for genetic research into the structures of the narrative imagination. The term ‘narrative imagination’ here denotes the creative activity set in motion to produce a narrative.⁶ It refers to the whole set of compositional operations and decisions, from the invention of story elements to the arrangement of the plot and the elaboration of the narratorial discourse. In my discussion, I will focus on three structural features that I consider important for the dynamic progress of the narrative imagination in Fontane’s text. These are the orientation towards a scenic organisation, the integration of details and the development of the narratorial discourse by approaching the character’s perspective.

In the outline, Fontane uses the form of a numbered list to structure the plot. The chapter segmentation is a basic but formal feature of the outline which does not say much about the regularities that apply to the transformation of story elements into a narrative arrangement. More important for the inner structure of the plot is that the document reveals the importance of orientation sequences. As content of the first chapter Fontane simply states: ‘Einleitungskapitel. Wohnung. Die Menschen’ [‘Introductory chapter. The flat. The people in it’].7 There is obviously no action in this chapter; it must serve some other purpose than to initiate the sequence of events. Instead, the main goal seems to be to introduce the reader to the specific setting of the novel. The establishing of a particular spatio-temporal environment precedes the representation of character’s actions. This hierarchy is also reflected in the order of the elements: first comes the spatial environment, then the people in it. The narrative attention moves from the outside to the inside, from the setting to the characters.

The creation of a particular setting is a central architectural element of the realist novel. The outline shows how this narrative convention already shapes the imagination of the story and the plotline. In this case, an entire chapter is reserved for what is known in film theory as the ‘establishing shot’. Furthermore, explicit setting markers are also found in the following chapter summaries: ‘Der 2. Januar früh. Rosalie geht durch die Schlafstube’ [‘Early on 2 January. Rosalie walks through the bedroom’] (chapter 2), ‘Um 4 Uhr kommt Leo’ [‘At 4 o’clock Leo comes’] (chapter 3), ‘Am andern Tag der Geburtstag’ [‘On the other day the birthday’] (chapter 4). All these short orientational sections are placed at the beginning of the chapter entries, which indicates that the change of setting is usually accompanied by the beginning of a new chapter. However, there are examples of spatio-temporal interruptions within a chapter. The entry for the fourth chapter states that the male protagonist Leo first goes for a walk with his sisters on the boulevard ‘Unter den Linden’ (in the centre of Berlin), then returns to his family’s house ‘Um 9 Uhr’ [at 9 o’clock] and begins a conversation with the housekeeper Rosalie in the kitchen. As in the other examples, the time indication is remarkably precise.

These setting markers illustrate not only the author’s interest in a clear timeline for his story, but also the ‘scenic’ structure of the plot. As Monika Fludernik (1996, 142–53) points out in her book Towards a ‘Natural Narratology’, the scenic organisation of the story is a core feature of the so-called realist paradigm. While many pre-modern novels tend to build the narrative as a sequence of micro-episodes, realist texts slow down the pace by establishing larger episodes with clear markers for the beginning and the end of the situation. Instead of moving quickly from one event to the next, the narrative expands the representation of how characters act, speak and feel within the framework of a particular setting.8 Thus, this kind of narrative puts emphasis on the orientational segments of the plot, which mark the opening of a new scene. Fontane’s outline reflects this emphasis through the quantity and relative precision of the spatio-temporal markers. They establish a sequence not so much of events as of scenes, which can be expanded as the genetic process continues. The scenic architecture of the plot functions both as a limitation and as a stimulus for the narrative imagination, as a glance at Fontane’s notes to the third chapter can illustrate:

Um 4 Uhr kommt Leo. Droschke. Rosalie lief hinunter, den kl[einen] ^Offiziers- Koffer zu holen. Leo kommt. Der Kaffetisch. Gespräch. ‘Ja, Kinder eigentlich habe ich Hunger. Sieben Stunden und blos in Kreuth (?) eine belegte Sem[m]el’. Die Entenleber. Der nächste Tag muß Lulus Geburtstag sein oder noch besser der Alten Geburtstag. Abendspaziergang mit zwei Schwestern. Kommt zurück. Gespräch mit Rosalie. Primel. ^{Pralinés etc} Hildebrandtsche Pfeffernüße oder Mehlweißchen.9

[At 4 o’clock Leo comes. The cab. Rosalie ran down to fetch the small ^officer’s case. Leo is coming. The coffee table. Conversation. ‘Yes, my dears, I am actually hungry. Seven hours and only a bread roll in Kreuth (?)’. The duck liver. The next day must be Lulu’s birthday, or even better, the old woman’s birthday. Evening walk with two sisters. Comes back. Conversation with Rosalie. Primrose. ^{Pralines etc.} Hildebrandt’s peppernuts. Mehlweißchen.]¹⁰

According to this summary, the chapter consists of two scenes, or more precisely, two conversation scenes since the only event mentioned in both cases is the conversation between the characters. The first scene is preceded by an abbreviated description of Leo’s arrival. An interesting detail is that Fontane uses the narrative (i.e. past) tense for the information that the housekeeper Rosalie goes down to fetch the suitcase (‘Rosalie lief hinunter’), but then switches back to the present tense (‘Leo kommt’). The effect is that the singular use of the past tense characterises Rosalie’s action as a past event in relation to Leo’s arrival in the room. It is part of a broad orientation segment which highlights the beginning of the actual scene, the family’s conversation at the coffee table. Although the topic of this conversation doesn’t seem to be very spectacular—everyday talk about the food during the trip and the plans for the dinner (‘Entenleber’)—Fontane already inserts a line of character’s speech. He seems to expand the scene almost automatically. The character’s speech is followed by an authorial remark noting an apparently spontaneous idea: the next day must be the birthday of one of the characters, but Fontane is still unsure whose birthday. Although this idea probably occurred to him at that moment, he immediately transposes this invention into another scene, a conversation between Leo and Rosalie about possible birthday presents.

In his revision of the document, Fontane elaborates on the first of the two scenes in several marginal notes. In doing so, he switches almost entirely into character speech:

The dialogue continues for a while. And Fontane is already working on the fine details, thinking it important, for example, that Leo ate not a simple bread roll on his journey, but a roll topped with anchovy. Almost everything that is said is irrelevant to the story of the novel. Nevertheless, Fontane devotes himself to elaborating the dialogue early on. It seems that this is not just a coincidence, but also has to do with the realistic structure of the text. The balance between interest in the individual scene and interest in the plot as a whole shifts in favour of the scene in a realistic novel. The scenic structure invites the reader to immerse themself in the scene and to some extent forget that it is part of a plotted novel. In the same way, Fontane also tends to immerse himself in the elaboration of scenes, regardless of whether the events in them are relevant to the progress of the plot or not. On the basis of the spatio-temporal framework initially established, the scene is developed not so much by conceptual considerations—for example, about important outcomes of the conversation—but rather through the more or less free (that is, free from the function of advancing the course of events) unfolding of the dialogue itself.

In Fontane’s outline, the scene is a central narrative structuring unit that shapes the structure of the plot and directs the narrative imagination in certain directions. In order to identify this structure, narrato-genetic analysis can draw on a concept that has already been introduced into narrative theory. Yet despite Fludernik’s impulses, ‘scene’ and ‘scenic narration’ have rarely been the subject of narratological investigation. It is possible, then, that genetic narratology offers a platform to further illuminate the heuristic potential of the concept.

The examples given above draw attention to another aspect that governs the structure of the narrative imagination in Fontane’s outline, namely the abundance of detailed information. Like ‘scene’, the concept of ‘detail’ is frequently used, but is rarely the subject of theoretical reflection. The most prominent contribution to a narratological theory of detail comes from Roland Barthes (1968), who is known to be particularly interested in those details that (supposedly) do not fulfil any function in the narrative context and should therefore be regarded as actually superfluous luxuries. Fontane’s multiple corrections, which specify the topping of Leo’s roll, can probably be regarded as such a case: ‘Seit 1 Stunde nichts als ein belegter ^Sardellen Sem[m]el, und dann belegt’ [‘Nothing but a topped ^anchovy bread roll for 1 hour, and then with topping’].

Barthes treats details like this as phenomena that appear on the surface of the narrative tissue (‘la surface du tissu narratif’; 1968, 84). He does not examine their genetic development. However, he does briefly address genetic processes in his essay: in Flaubert’s laborious revisions of descriptive passages, he recognises the alignment of narrative with the older, pre-realist principle of beautiful style (86). In his revisions, Flaubert would not be concerned with referential accuracy, but with the most aesthetically convincing formulation. But the superfluous detail does not serve the beauty of the style. According to Barthes, it is merely meant to denote ‘reality’. For this ‘reality effect’, it is actually irrelevant which object is mentioned, as long as it appears functionless. Why spend a lot of corrective effort on something that is more or less arbitrarily interchangeable anyway? The functionless detail in Barthes’ sense is an element that seems to be added to the narrative in the phase of textual elaboration and that should leave hardly any traces in the genetic process.

Genetic narratology, in turn, looks through the textual surface of the (finished) narrative and asks when the superfluous actually emerges in the course of the genesis. Fontane’s ‘Sardellen-Semmel’ is an example of how such a detail can be worked out surprisingly early in the genetic process. But perhaps even more surprising are the details mentioned in the summary to the third chapter. As a reminder, Fontane records here possible birthday presents for old Mrs Poggenpuhl:

It is noteworthy that these details do not appear as part of a character’s speech or the narrator’s discourse. Fontane lists them as if they were events of the story; as if it really mattered for the outcome of the narrative whether the gift was primroses, pralines or peppernuts from Hildebrandt’s manufactory. The superfluous details are already included in the textual fixation of the plot; they are not mere additions by the author to colour the narrative discourse. In a way, this contradicts the opposition between the supposedly functionless detail and the narrative structure that Barthes highlights. For it seems that these elements can already take on a function in the process of creating a realistic storyworld.

In the search for this structural function, one has to look more closely at the intended effect of realistic texts. According to Barthes’ concept of ‘reality effect’, the main aim of realist writing is to make the recipients believe the text world to be true. The emphasis in this understanding is on the referential claim of the text and the principle of celare artem, the concealment of art. In contrast to this conception, both nineteenth-century poetics (cf. Grüne 2018) and modern, especially cognitive approaches to literary theory (Fludernik 1996; Kukkonen 2019) describe the primary aim of realistic texts as animating the recipient to immerse themself in the world designed by the text. The impression of being embedded like the characters in a concrete, sensually tangible reality is thus most important. And when it comes to the superfluous detail, its function is not to signify reality, but this reality, that is, a particular situation in which the characters are mentally and physically embedded.

It is precisely this mixture of apparent casualness and indirect structural significance that allows these elements to become symbols without disturbing the illusion of a concrete reality. In the present case, it is interesting to note that the symbolic use of details is not yet indicated in the plot outline. It is only in the more elaborate drafts or in the published novel that these connections become apparent. There we read, for example, that when the housekeeper dusts the pictures in the flat every day, she always drops the picture showing the family’s hero, a Prussian officer who had distinguished himself in a battle during the Seven Years’ War (Fontane 2006, 15). The symbolic meaning of the detail, the criticism of an outdated aristocratic and Prussian pride, is obvious, but the symbolism seems ‘natural’ and unforced precisely because it is linked to a supposedly marginal act like daily cleaning. Another example is the aforementioned detail of the ‘Hildebrandtsche Pfeffernüße’ [‘peppernuts from the Hildebrandt company’]. This detail actually appears in the finished novel, though not in the place indicated in the sketch, but in a later chapter. In a discussion about the social value of names, the protagonist Leo refers to the company Theodor Hildebrands, which has existed in Berlin since 1817. He points out that the symbolic capital of a name is no longer a privilege of the aristocratic class. On the contrary, the importance of the family name is fading and the brand name is taking its place. The aristocratic elite is being outplayed by the social and financial power of capitalist bourgeoisie. A similar development, Leo believes, can be observed in the field of art. In terms of public awareness and recognition, brand names easily surpass the artist’s name:

Nehmen wir […] beispielsweise den großen Namen Hildebrand. Es gibt, glaub’ ich, drei berühmte Maler dieses Namens, der dritte kann übrigens auch ein Bildhauer gewesen sein, es thut nichts. Aber wenn irgendwo von Hildebrand gesprochen wird, wohl gar in der Weihnachtszeit, so denkt doch kein Mensch an Bilder und Büsten, sondern bloß an kleine dunkelblaue Packete mit einem Pfefferkuchen obenauf und einer Strippe drum herum. (Fontane 2006, 64)

We do not know whether Fontane was already thinking of giving the ‘Hildebrandtsche Pfeffernüße’ a symbolic meaning when he wrote his outline. However, it is obvious why he succeeds so easily in attaching subtle symbolic references to supposedly superfluous details of the storyworld: because these details are always present and already integral components of the plot. They do not have to be invented for this purpose.

With ‘scene’ and ‘detail’, two terms have been discussed so far that do not belong to the inner circle of narratological terminology. The next section turns to a far more prominent notion, as it deals with the emergence of a narrator figure in Fontane’s manuscript. As already mentioned, the plot scheme does not represent a zero grade of mediacy in every respect, because it shows rudiments of a mediated (i.e. narrative) discourse as well as a dialogue. What Stanzel (1986, 33) notes about the notebooks of Henry James also applies to this text: along with the contours of the plot, the figure of the narrator is already vaguely visible. This process of a slow emergence of the narrator’s voice from the author’s text could become one of the most interesting and promising fields of investigation for genetic narratology. In the following, I will use the term ‘narrativisation’ to describe this process.

In modern narratology, this term was coined by Monika Fludernik (1996) who uses it as a kind of specification of the broader concept of ‘naturalisation’. While naturalisation describes a strategy of coping with strange or unfamiliar aspects of a text ‘by taking recourse to available, diverse interpretative patterns’ (31), narrativisation refers to those cases in which this process is carried out ‘by recourse to narrative schemata’ (34). In other words: narrativisation describes a reading strategy that consists of imposing the framework of narrativity on a text in order to reduce its strangeness.

When readers are confronted with potentially unreadable narratives, texts that are radically inconsistent, they cast about for ways and means of recuperating these texts as narratives—motivated by the generic markers that go with the book. They therefore attempt to re-cognize what they find in the text in terms of the natural telling or experiencing or viewing parameters, or they try to recuperate the inconsistencies in terms of action and event structures at the most minimal level. This process of narrativization, of making something a narrative by the sheer act of imposing narrativity on it, needs to be located in the dynamic reading process where such interpretative recuperations hold sway. (Fludernik 1996, 34)

Genetic narratology gives the concept of narrativisation a different but in some ways complementary meaning compared to Fludernik’s approach. Instead of the ‘dynamic reading process’, the dynamic of production comes to the fore, and thus the question of which textual strategies the author uses to make ‘something a narrative’. This does not correspond to Hayden White’s (1980, 6) understanding of narrativisation as the act of imposing the form of a story on the raw material of (historical) events. Rather, this conception comes close to what Stanzel (1986, 37) describes as the search for and successive development of a ‘form of mediacy’, i.e. a specific shaping of the narrative discourse that includes, for example, the choice of narratorial perspective. The process of elaborating a narrative profile is likely to involve the activation of general as well as historically specific schemata associated with the concept of narrativity, for example, generic patterns or narrative conventions like the use of a figural perspective. Genetic research can identify which concrete textual strategies are used to create a certain ‘form of mediacy’ and which of these compositional choices are likely to be related to historically specific conceptions of narrativity.

The emergence of a narrator’s speech and a characteristic narrative attitude from the author’s conceptual notes can first be considered on a grammatical level. Referring to a concept of Käte Hamburger, Stanzel (1986, 32) speaks of the ‘tabular present’ as a characteristic of the conceptual text. The present tense is indeed the predominant tense used in Fontane’s outline, as the examples quoted above have shown. Furthermore, in some sentences a verb is omitted altogether or Fontane uses infinitives without any tense marking, as in the (already quoted) beginning of the entry to chapter 2:

Although, grammatically, this text excerpt clearly does not yet constitute narratorial speech, it does already exhibit a more complex degree of narrativity. This is not because the events mentioned can be brought into a meaningful connection and in this respect form a minimal story, as this applies to the entire plot sketch. Rather, the point is that these lines display an increased degree of what Fludernik calls ‘experientiality’ (1996, 28–30): the impression of being situated in a specific spatio-temporal context. It has already been emphasised that the integration of details and casual actions obviously serves to accentuate the specificity of a situation in order to foster the narrative imagination. For the same reason, the text already tends to convey experientiality in many places, even where it does not yet show the grammatical characteristics of a narrative. Sometimes the experiential quality of the text can be detected in the lexis. In the example given, Fontane uses the expression ‘Das Wasser bullert’ [‘The water is bubbling’], which not only informs us of the fact that the water is boiling, but also phonetically represents the sensual quality of the process. In terms of style, it corresponds more to the vocabulary of the simple housekeeper, so that Fontane approaches the linguistic perspective of the character through his choice of words.

All in all, it seems that Fontane automatically approaches the character’s perspective when working on the plot—even before the elaboration of the discourse begins. The reason for this inclination lies in the poetological premise that immersion in the narrated world is a central aim of the literary text. This tendency also explains the abrupt shifts from the author’s text to the narratorial discourse which sometimes occur in the middle of a sentence:

The first part is still in the ‘tabular present’, the next part already uses the past tense and in the last section the narratorial character is also underlined by the use of indirect speech. It is noticeable that the use of the past tense is often connected with dialogue passages. The development of the narratorial discourse then begins either directly before or after the character’s speech. In this marginal note (already discussed), Fontane switches from mere enumeration to narration and then to dialogue:

In such passages, a gradual transformation can be observed from the author’s text, which lists the plot elements, to a narrator’s text, which tells a story. In this process, the voices of the author, the narrator and the characters can merge in a way that comes close to the phenomenon of free indirect discourse. In the following example, Fontane describes how the Poggenpuhl family decides who should buy the mourning clothes for their uncle’s funeral. The text oscillates between narratorial discourse, author text and figural speech:

In his analysis of James’ notebooks, Stanzel (1986, 34–36) discusses similar instances of free indirect speech and interprets them as anticipating the ‘narrative situation’, in this case the figural narration, which is finally realised in the finished text. In Fontane’s work, however, things are somewhat different: free indirect speech is occasionally used in his novels, but not particularly extensively; none of his novels presents a consistent figural narration. In this case, too, the scene is presented in the finished novel as a simple narratorial account without traces of free indirect discourse (Fontane 2006, 102). And this is not an isolated case; Walter Hettche (2003) has pointed out that Fontane’s drafts sometimes contain advanced narrative forms, such as free indirect speech or interior monologue, which, however, are transformed into more conventional forms of presentation in the course of the genetic process. As for Die Poggenpuhls, a glance at the published text reveals a similar picture. The above-mentioned discussion between the characters is reduced to a single sentence by the narrator, who remarks that ‘man sich untereinander dahin geeinigt hatte, daß Therese in die Stadt fahren und dort die Trauergarderobe besorgen solle’ [‘they had agreed that Therese should go to the city and get the mourning clothes’] (Fontane 2006, 102). It seems reasonable to assume that the appearance of more complex forms of representation in the outline is less an anticipation of the future ‘narrative situation’ than an unintended consequence of the effort to get closer to the characters’ perspective of experience. For in Fontane’s creative process, partial immersion in the concrete world of the characters functions as an essential stimulus for the narrative imagination.

My reading of a plot outline of Theodor Fontane’s novel Die Poggenpuhls was intended as a test case for narrato-genetic research. The aim was not to give an exhaustive account of the entire genesis of a novel, but to gain insight into the structural conditions of the narrative imagination—understood as the creative activity of inventing, arranging and elaborating a narrative—on the basis of a single document. The narratological toolkit has proved suitable for drawing attention to these structural features that underlie individual compositional decisions and corrections. With regard to Fontane’s outline, the concept of ‘scene’ was useful to describe a characteristic feature of the plot design and to explain the emergence of precise spatio-temporal information even at a relatively early stage of the genetic process. The narratological debate about the function of ‘details’ (or lack thereof) provided a framework to illuminate how attention to supposedly superfluous story details already structures the writing of the plot outline. Finally, the narratological distinction between several instances of utterance (author, narrator, character) paved the way for the analysis of the intermingling of authorial (i.e. factual) text with the fictional discourse of narrator and characters. In all these aspects, one can notice a strong tendency on the part of the author to put himself in the situation of his characters, which is obviously an important stimulus for the unfolding of the narrative imagination.

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